Forum:Past tense Present tense Vote
I thought anyone who was interested should vote here on whether articles should be consistent in there tenses. As of now some articles are past tense and some are present. The options are to 1. not regulate this in any way. 2. Make all articles one tense or the other, and 3. Have one rule for movie canon articles and another for RGB canon article (and possibly another for the IDW comics). I feel than any article written from an in-universe perspective should be in past tense. If the whole article is in past tense it tends to make writers more consistant. If a writer starts portraying the action in present tense but switched to past tense for a bit of background info. often times they will forget to switch back when continuing the description. If it is all in past tense there is no problems with consistency when writing about a movie/tv show/comic you have just seen. It is easier to say,"The ghostbusters then went into the hotel ball room and captured slimer," then it is to say, "They then go into the ball room, where the capture slimer." (IMHO) However, the benefits of writing in present tense are that it helps the reader feel the action, and it also gives the characters a sense of life. It is more pleasing to the ear to hear, "Slimer is a ghost that dwells in the firehouse" versus "Slimer was a ghost that dwelt in the firehouse." All Wiki's are different but if we look to the star wars wiki (as an example of one of the largest wikis about a multimedia franchise) they use past tense for everything. When they decided this it was easy because all the action happened "a long time ago." As for ghostbusters, it was definitely set in the 80's and even the video game made in the 21st century was set in the 80's. Because of this, and to improve consistency I think everything that is told from an in-universe perspective (thats another issue to work out) should be in past tense. I dont think there needs to be a different rule for the different canons. I also think this will help users make edits with confidence that they aren't changing the tone or style of someone elses work. Anyone else have thoughts? IthinkIwannaLeiaWaddaUthink? 19:23, October 22, 2011 (UTC) :The only speed bumps in this are real world current items such as toylines. Also, Ghost Apocalyptic Future episode is written to address the future/alternate timeline. Is Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime past tense? All questions of this sort may need to be hammered out first. But I want to hear from Mrmichaelt first. Boy there is sure a lot here to address. :\ Devilmanozzy (Talk Page) 21:19, October 22, 2011 (UTC) ::I tend to be a proponent of past tense because it happened as you watched/played/read the scene. Naturally, there are exceptions. For example, the blurbs at the start of articles can be in a present tense as you presented with "Slimer is the ghost that dwells with the Ghostbusters." But to be honest, I'm not very concerned with one or the other. As long an article remains in one tense, has correct spelling, grammatically correct, accurate information, etc. I mean call me crazy but I use Firefox and have an auto-spell checker. When I see misspellings, even if it was me, it drives me up the wall. Mrmichaelt 06:11, October 23, 2011 (UTC) ::I guess that there doesn't have to be a hard rule, but improper tense shift in an article is as bad as misspellings to me. (speaking of which, the Chrome spell checker doesn't appear to work in the Visual Editing mode of wikia. Weird?! so I apologize in advance for my numerous spelling mistakes without my spellcheck). If there was a rule, obviously real world articles would not be affected (they would follow real world timelines.) as far as time travel and alternate futures, when writing the article in-universe you'd still use past tense since you already saw/read it happen to them. You would not describe a story as, "then Marty traveled '''into the future. Once he '''got there, he will meet his son, who will be bullied by Griff." ::I agree that the blurbs could be in present tense. I like how some of them were written like the end of a batman episode (will the ghostbusters be able to defeat him in time?!)IthinkIwannaLeiaWaddaUthink? 21:21, October 25, 2011 (UTC)